assignment operator that treats empty and nil as the same thing

### test1
otest = {};
otest['first_name'] ||= 'homer';
puts otest.inspect;

### test2
otest = {'first_name'=>''};
otest['first_name'] ||= 'homer';
puts otest.inspect;

Problem: test1 produces the correct output, but test2 produces
unwanted output (the value remains as an empty string). I realize that
ruby treats the empty string as "true" ... nevertheless I want to find
an assignment operator in ruby that treats nil and empty exactly the
same way, with the behavior shown in test1.

Question: Is there a way to do this in ruby *without* resorting to an
if statement or some other construct such as:

otest['first_name'] = (otest['first_name'].empty?) 'homer' :
otest['first_name'];

I would like to handle this with a *single* assignment operator, just
like you can do in test1.

.

Relevant Pages

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